Quote:
Occurs December 23rd.
With a tap of triumph, the pen bounced once upon the narrow table, then twice, then a third time before finally coming to settle on the slate surface. By that time, Sinope’s back had already hit the bed behind him. He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as he exhaled through it, exhausted after translating the last week’s worth of notes into as proper a report as he could manage on four hours of on-and-off shut-eye. Sleep had been ditching him frequently over the past few nights and he hadn’t had much of an appetite. The time he had previously spent eating and sleeping was now occupied by his brooding on what he had discovered and what he felt about it. And, of course, what he had attempted to do about it.
He couldn’t manage to logic away the feeling of betrayal and it pissed him off. By all his determinations, he had absolutely no right to be angry, upset, or hurt that Elex hadn’t told him. He shouldn’t even have felt anything about it at all because Elex hadn’t had any reason to tell him. So why did he feel like he did?
Maybe it was because they had ********. Sinope was no expert on relationships, so he must have made the wrong assumption about which they were in together. He should have known better than to entertain hopes, especially after he had outright asked the captain and said captain had denied that they were dating. That had been months ago, though, and after all the intimate things they’d done with and to each other, he hadn’t ever bothered to clarify about the nature of what they were to each other. He’d been too afraid. Not just of being wrong, but of being right. Now that he knew for certain that he was wrong, however, it felt so much worse and he couldn’t even acknowledge why.
Even before having met Elex, Sinope had been confident that he’d be able to accept being used and even respected the person if someone had had the cunning to manage the feat. Back then, though, he’d also been confident that he would never have succumbed to the emotional attachment that he had negligently allowed himself to develop for the Negaverse officer, even nurturing it like a dangerously beautiful flowering vine. Now it was choking him, its thorns tearing him asunder as he slowly suffocated, and he had no one to blame but himself. Still, though, he wasn’t about to just sit idly by and wallow in self-pity.
Not long after he had first witnessed Rowan’s status on Facebook, the teenager found himself eager to take action, but his reasoning for doing so diverged into two main concepts. The first was his childish spite that longed to hurt the happy, perfect couple as he was hurting, regardless of the fact that the fault of the matter lay with himself. This spite was cloaked in a protective layer of pride in his efforts to stick to trickster ideologies. If he was going to selfishly ruin their contentment, why not do so in a way he could exhibit his guile and cleverness?
The second concept contradicted the first somewhat, but was similarly selfish at its core. If Elex and Rowan were dating, it was likely they were going to get emotionally attached to each other. Perhaps they already were. Attachments like that meant emotional damage inflicted on one another whether they meant to or not. While Sinope was usually all for letting people hurt themselves or each other, this was one time he couldn’t just stand idly by. His own pain was tied to Elex’s, after all.
Now that he had committed his deed and sowed his seeds, all he could do was restlessly await reaping the harvest.
Faustite never predicted it -- and that drove him the most in his ire. His rage simmered and seethed that he knew Sinope so terribly, perfectly well, and yet that little wretch of a boy actually took agency for himself. For all the time he tried to yoke himself to Faustite's ruling hand, he spent just as much of that time chewing Faustite's hand off. And for what? Jealousy? Pride? Some petty gains in double-dealing? A wish for death? A hundred equally viable reasons came to mind, each more irksome than the last, until Faustite himself could stand no more of these ruminations.
He couldn't simply sit for this. But he couldn't rush in with all his sound and fury; Sinope proved again and again his belligerence and his contrariness. Such a display would force the boy to take action --
but perhaps that wasn't a detriment.
Faustite stood at once from the loathsome cot in his closet. Whorls of smoke reminded him of his eternal damnation with their simmering scents. But he purged them from mind -- he purged them for the scent of sea air, for brilliant lights that spilled over warm mahogany decor, for the single airplant that still sat on the windowsill.
First he wasn't, then he was.
Faustite's form appeared with no foreword or precedent -- and already he met the other teen with unchecked rage. The old boarded floor groaned beneath his boots' assault as he closed on the other boy. He hissed his words like hot iron. "Why the hell would you do that?"
Didn’t even have to speak of the devil for him to show, spitting fire and billowing smoke, he thought, not bothering to budge where he lay on the fold-out bed. This fire is new, though. Unexpected. Is this a side of you I haven’t seen?
“You’re going to have to be more specific than that,” Sinope answered with impudent indolence, folding audacious arms behind his head as his lazy eyelids still obscured the captain’s livid form from sight. Just how cross are you? I don’t think it’s enough yet. Not to match what I’ve endured. But more importantly, for what reason? What about what I’ve done has gotten you so incensed?
“Whatever it is, though, I’m surprised at you, Captain. I thought you’d become immune to my antics by now. And don’t you know me so well - better, even, than I know myself?” His lids lifted halfway so he could regard the Negaverse officer. Though he crossed his ankles with a casual motion, his gaze was hard with contempt.
Faustite snarled as his ire burned him. Out it vented from his back in hot vapours, reaching to claim every crack in the ceiling. Already he felt too hot. "You know what you did. You expect me to say it? Is that what begets your pride, Sinope? Screwing the people you pledge to protect because you had the power for it? I hope the show was marvelous. I hope it gave you everything you ever wanted, because it won't happen twice. Not like this."
Yet standing there, casting his gaze down on the too-smug teen with his blasé stance and his childish expression tempted him greedily. He could play the snake that swallowed Sinope's soul and end him for all his trouble, but that left the leak open-ended. Schörl was clear. Recontextualize the information, to use her irritatingly abstract words. Sinope's destruction was self-assured; it needn't be that day, that week, or that month. But he would die, and he'd die badly -- a promise to both himself and to everyone into which Sinope threaded his caustic fingers. He was a child, one that never grasped the promise behind his self-professed role. An idiot who followed blindly a stiff ideal that existed only in the realm of fairytales. He --
Faustite turned from him at once, and his gaze found the loud burn of a candle that flickered disapproval. He watched the fragile wick dance with the sway of the boat. He watched its smoke mingle with his. Ire refused to cool, but the tremor in his hands was welcome to remain.
His voice trembled in softer volumes. "Rowan left." He half-turned, and found the window staring dully back at him with a lazy darkness, a mockery of his mood. "Nothing I said could stop him. He made up his mind. He couldn't trust me because I work with an organization that 'for lack of better words is in the market of stealing souls when convenient for them'." Stealing souls like they could be property. Like life and soul aren't inextricably intertwined. When you view people as toys, when you play with their relationships on a whim, you mark yourself a better officer than me. You're what the Negaverse wants, Sinope.
He left the words to find their mark. In the plotted silence sprang up the hundred pinpricks of old memories, each dotting him with pains not fully left to heal. Like his own smoke, they coalesced and choked him. Robbed him of composure where he struggled so staunchly for it. He stood amidst a reminder of all the times he'll never join his father on the wharf, never laugh with his brother over his father's drunken antics, and never know the rare moments where he and his mother saw eye-to-eye. His old life withered, and his new life tasted just as wretched. It clouded him with its poisoned thoughts. Promised him that survivors wore pain like honor badges.
But it was enough. His gaze clouded with more dark, and that dark stained his skin. "You won." He looked to Sinope, his gaze cutting to the point of Sinope's laconic display. "Isn't that what you wanted to hear? You won. He's gone. Who else should I expect to leave me?"
Dark brows threatened to disappear behind his bangs as they rose, lifting his lids with them. In a moment they crashed back down, angling over coldly furious eyes like broken beams. “I think you’re misunderstanding a few things.” Arms thicker than those belonging to Sinope a few weeks ago pushed him up into a seated position on the bed. Scratching his head, he wore a faintly disgruntled expression as he shut out the sight of Faustite before him once more. It was vexing how difficult it became to think just by seeing him, especially in the state the captain was now. Is that vulnerability I smell mixed in with that smokey scent of yours?
“First of all, I never pledged to protect anyone. I’m no fairytale hero. You want protectors, go find yourself a White Moon boyfriend.” His stony gaze bored into the captain until the half-youma’s pipes were facing him instead. “Or perhaps you already have.”
The solid, protective layer of apathy he had attempted to fortify himself with beforehand took heavy blows from the tremor of Elex’s words. It held, but only barely. Not only did it suffer external damage, but rapidly-shifting emotions beneath weakened its stability like extreme temperature changes. “He left, did he?” Sinope’s features had resumed a relatively neutral composition, but his grip tightened on the bedsheets. “Last we discussed the fellow, you told me you had been watching him. That you wanted to know how much it would take to pry out the truth; to see how much he would lie to himself and to you. He actually pretended to think I was crazy when I mentioned soul-stealing to him.”
He relinquished his grip on the bedsheet in favor of gesturing toward the captain. “But there you go. Now you have your answer. You couldn’t possibly have any other use for him.” Blue-green irises peered up with an acerbic intensity from beneath heavy brows. “Unless, that is, there was more to that than you cared to share with me.” The senshi scooted himself further up the bed, making a show of arranging the pillows in order to support his back better and seeming particularly dedicated to fluffing them just right. “If that was the case, it’d be a terrible shame. Just goes to show how important communication is.”
When those black voids fixed on him again, he couldn’t escape them. Ceasing his pillow-fluffing, he settled back against the cushions and crossed his arms over his chest. What remained of his armor crumbled away and he dropped his gaze to the foot of the bed. “He was going to leave you sooner or later,” he answered in steady tones. “There’s no way he would have been able to ignore how you would only have been able to spend three hours at a time with him at most. He would have asked questions with or without me; questions would wouldn’t have been able to give him the answers to. It’s better he asked them sooner than later, when your investment in each other might have been greater and there would have been more to break.”
In a way, I was protecting you. Both of you. And maybe myself as well.
“Who else? I don’t know, Faustite. I didn’t make him leave. He chose to leave because he didn’t think he could trust you. What kind of relationship would that have been built on trust that weak?”
Before you woke as Sinope, you would've thought the same. Soul-stealing comes out of books and metaphor. It comes from nightmares, not waking realities. And when spoken by a boy who wears an eared hood, do you expect the ambience is there for believability?
His jaw steeled through Sinope's ageless jawing and goading. He spoke at length unbidden, much like Rowan did; neither of them saw him as a threat, and Sinope had more idea of what power he possessed. But he did not know the breadth of Faustite's conviction — he couldn't, not for a count of days. Yes, lecture me. You've learned so much, hiding in your parents' den. Oh how you pained and you scraped and you suffered when spending those nights on the mall roof. Look at all it's done for you. How pretty you are at your podium, with your lips pouted and your words everything but pithy.
I should have killed you.
Faustite rolled the taste of blood through his mouth, sucked it to the back of his throat, and painted his words where they waited for breath. He counted the seconds spent wastefully on empty words. Sooner or later. Would have been able to. With or without. Might have been. Would have been. You speak with no elegance and I'm damned to endure it. Pity for me. As Sinope wound through his thoughtfulness, Faustite kept his gaze trained on the window. In the distance, if he paid no attention to Sinope's milky reflection in the glass, he could watch a world completely ignorant to his own. He could watch how the ocean met the horizon without the sticky traumas caused by men in their own relationships. Caused by men like Sinope. I wish I was straight.
His restraint broke valiantly, and he snorted. "So that's what this is. For my own good." The room left only space for intimacy; Faustite could only maintain distance by sitting down and pressing shoulder against a stout cabinet. Its doors grumbled their disapproval at the brush of his weight. He wiped the black from his cheek on the back of his hand. "Fine. You're right." Aimlessly he spread his fingers through the damp. Soon, it vanished into the folds of his skin. "I got what I deserved. And Rowan won't find out the truth to his distrust.
"It started as watching him. But boys are territorial. They like to spread, gloat, play. They like to stake claims in what they see. They like to conquer. They like to spoil and be spoilt. And they know who they can infect. They find all the little holes in your skin and crawl their way underneath. But it's euphoric, every minute of it. I don't fear it. I won't. I didn't with you, I didn't with him." It would've broken without you spreading your petty claws into it.
Tell me more about how you think you're doing me favors. "Before you walk out on me too, who else did you tell?"
”Before I walk out on you?” Walk out on him like Faustite wouldn’t want him gone? Like he meant something to him? He stared at the back of Elex’s head as if doing so long and hard enough would allow him to peer into his mind. Unknown to him, the space between Sinope’s brows continued to furrow and his lips slowly parted.
This was what he’d wanted, right? This was really what was best for them all. Wasn’t it? Why were his stomach, throat, and chest all seizing up, then? Emotions. His emotions were overriding his logic and they were tied to Elex’s. Elex was in pain, so he was in pain. Even if this was for their own good.
Something was wrong. He still felt guilty and he wasn’t able to reason it away. It went from a dull, nagging ache to sharp stabs when he recognized the action of Elex brushing the back of his hand against his face.
Tears. Tears that instantly transported him to the last night he had borne witness to them. Echoes of memories overlapped with thoughts of the present and resounded back at him several fold, magnifying their relevance.
"You're a lonely little boy, Jack. You're afraid to feel, but you want to.”
“If you're always pushing to die, Sinope, what would a relationship matter?”
"So you want vulnerability. Consider this your consolation prize."
Ever so delicately, Sinope unfolded his forbidding arms and shifted his weight to move himself up and off of the bed. He never tore his gaze from the Negaverse officer standing at the window. So much hadn’t made sense. If Elex had known Rowan and he couldn’t have lasted, there had to be some reason he had done it anyway. The captain was smarter than that.
Even if it hadn’t been for some Negaverse advantage, even if it had just been for himself, he must have had something in mind. But Sinope hadn’t bothered to find out what. He hadn’t even asked Elex about it before mentioning it to Rowan. He’d been too pissed off. Not at them for dating, but at himself for not having paid enough attention to Elex to notice. But instead of dealing with it maturely, he’d just taken out his rage on the other teens and whatever meager happiness they might have been able to find with each other.
He walked up to where the black-haired boy had seated himself, wedged up against a cabinet within their close quarters, and stood there regarding him with deep melancholy as he powered down.
“So I'm not looking for a chance from you or anyone else, but from myself. From this feeling of being pulled apart.”
"So I could never commit with all of me.”
"And even if I could, I wouldn't do it to be toyed with by you.”
“It doesn’t matter how many times you say it or in how many different ways,” Jack stated. “That you don’t, you won’t, you didn’t. It doesn’t make it true. I would know. And I think you know I would know.” He reached out to run his fingertips along strands of Elex’s hair. “Euphoria like that always comes with a price. Even if it’s something as simple as a fear of losing it. There’s no point in trying to lie to yourself. The truth always comes back around to bite you in the a**.”
I promised you I wouldn’t toy with you. But what have I done?
“I’m sorry, Elex. I know that’s not enough. I didn’t tell anyone else, but…”
I don’t know what he meant to you, but if I’d known it was this much, I wouldn’t have done it. A painful jolt seemed to assault his chest as if to question his honesty. No, that’s wrong. I would have anyway. Maybe I’d have wanted to even more. And part of me is still glad of it.
Another occasion’s recollections were summoned. Hand-holding. Talk of dating.
"'Dating' always implied courtship. Songs and dances and flowers and theaters and dinners. Sweet nothings. Familial appeasement. All these imperfect white lies and improper second faces to woo an audience you never asked for.”
"I've never dated. I will never get the opportunity again -- not like I am now. I'll never know what it means to love someone the way that you can.”
“I didn’t realize. I didn’t know he was what you wanted or needed. I got angry. I acted impulsively. I told myself it was for reasons other than what I did it for.” He slid to his knees in front of the other teenager. “I wasn’t thinking about you. Or Rowan. Just me.”
Familiar, milquetoast darkness receded from Faustite's awareness; Sinope powered down. Irritation spiked like a cresting wave. Are you trying to sell me your vulnerabilities? Or are you fishing for another death? Your old habits are only getting older. He listened for the patter of feet, booted as they were, and recognized the whinging tone. Jack always grated where he could, especially if he smelled his victim's irritation.
Faustite's gaze fixated straight ahead, with his ear pressed to the cabinet door. He refused to look at Jack. "That's the difference between us. I don't cower from that price. I won't yield, even to my fears. Especially to my fears.
"Do you know what that word means, Sinope? Fear -- it's a preamble. A harbinger to change. It's the death of stale normalcy festering in your gut. And when it passes, you're someone else. Someone different. I'm made better for every change I survive.
"But what about you? You're stagnant, my dear senshi." He caught the fingers that tried for his hair. Jack's hand wore a stark pallor, like a too-pale wedding dress against Faustite's black grasp. Looking askance to Jack, he watched for a reaction. You've become a super senshi since I've known you, but you haven't changed. You left your parents' sanctuary, but you're still wandering aimlessly. You're still expecting someone to hand you the answers and point you down the next paths. You looked to me for that at first. Then you treated me like a path.
And now we're here.
I led you here, didn't I? You barely act on your own. You barely take agency over your own life. I did this. The time I spent with Rowan caused this.
But you're the one who threw his life away. Not me.
Rousing himself from the cabinet, Faustite lacked the space to turn toward his companion. He turned his head toward the once-senshi, and looked to the hand that still lay in his grasp. A black thumb found its pulse. "What will you do now?"
So you can’t even bear to look at me? A wry, paradoxical grin began to split Jack’s face like a growing wound. That upset, huh?
Well...I guess I did really screw things up this time. Gravity took its time relinquishing its hold on him as he wrenched himself back up onto his feet.
“That’s right,” he agreed, his smile departing to leave his countenance and voice weary with the dregs of strong feelings. “That’s what I do. I cower. I’m cautious. It’s a tactic of self-preservation, not a crime.” The high schooler tensed at the sudden grip on his questing fingers and considered the contrast of their values, both visible and not. At least on the surface. But underneath, he wasn’t sure they were so different. “And maybe I don’t make much sense. Like how despite valuing caution, I kept coming back to test the limits of someone who kept trying to kill me. But you’re not making sense, either.”
The focus of his vision trained on the thumb that traced his pulse, which began to quicken in spite of him. “First you claim that you don’t - insist that you won’t - fear that euphoria, like you have to convince yourself of it. But now you say you won’t yield to it, which is acknowledgement that that fear exists for you.” The redhead stared into blank, ebony pools of shining ink. “So then; are you afraid, or not?”
Faustite’s final inquiry invoked a grim grin. “What am I going to do now?” Jack repeated. “I think I’m going to challenge you to a game of Truth or Dare. But this time,” he added, holding up the index finger of his free hand to wave at his peer, “intoxication’s not going to be allowed as an excuse for telling the truth or courage for doing a dare.” His locked tenacious eyes with the Negaverse officer. “We’re not using alcohol to numb anything.
“You’re welcome to decline and leave, of course. I just don’t see why someone who doesn’t yield to their fear, existent or non, would have reason to turn me down.” Teenage shoulders cast a throwaway shrug. “I mean, it’s not like you have a date or anything, do you?”
Caustic sarcasm nursed his words to life. "You caught me, Sinope." Faustite shrugged, relinquishing his hold on the once-senshi's hand to broaden his gesture. He leaned forward afterward, hands clasped before him like sturdy gatekeepers. "You figured it out. You unraveled my words and found the lie. I must be afraid, and that invalidates all my points." He sat back, head cocked.
"Either you weren't listening or you willfully ignored my point." Faustite looked on at Sinope with a scowl, neither impressed by his endless penchant for pedantics nor intimidated by it. It doesn't matter. You've written your own version of me. You'll always choose what you want to hear.
It's easier to write my opinions for me than to actualize that I have opinions of my own.
A restless leg tapped its syncopated rhythm against the lush carpet. He had little patience for Jack's grandiosities, or the slow and plodding manner by which he reached his points (if he reached them, Faustite supposed). Faustite's acceptance came curtly, with low tolerance implied in the way his words ground against one another. "Fine. I won't pretend that I have a choice. You asked for this because of something specific. So tell me, Jack -- is it a question eating you, or an action you're starved for? You pick this time.
"I won't play along with false options."
Of course the moment the captain’s sarcasm reached out to caress his ego with stinging fingers, Jack knew his tactic had been unsuccessful. Spotlighting a different subject hadn’t made the one Faustite brought up any less relevant or true. His failed endeavor had only served to sharpen the Negaverse officer’s point - that he was constantly avoiding and fleeing from his fears and, in turn, evading change.
I did change, though, he thought, watching the dark-haired, dark-eyed being’s characteristic fidgeting. Maybe not for the better. But if I hadn’t, then I would never have intervened in whatever you and Rowan had. I wouldn’t have risked wrecking whatever we had. The high schooler went to stand at the window where Elex had posted himself prior, peering through the glass in an effort to quell his roiling bitterness. I still don’t even know the natures of what those are. Were.
Do I want to know?
“Like I said, you’re welcome to just leave.” The reminder was velvet over a serrated knife. “You came here asking me ‘why’ and ‘who’ and ‘what’ and I answered. I just thought you might have the courtesy to return the favor.” Taut lines defined the tension in his hands as he clasped them behind his back and turned his face from its reflection.
“You once asked me what I had thought of you. The opposite question was always plaguing me. And while I found out you and Rowan were dating, it soon extended to him, too.” Lids lowered gradually over hazel irises. “What were Rowan and I to you before I decided to meddle?”
Faustite narrowed his eyes at the teen's back but said nothing more. Arms folded across his chest, a self-assuring barrier.
So we're circling around to this again. A crease of displeasure formed in his face. It wouldn't matter -- he could answer this question and be on his way, leave Sinope behind, and pursue his own goals. Return only to remind Sinope of the repercussions for crossing a captain. Secure his future and his name.
The thought alone worried him. Would he return to that life again? Could he? Days spent with Rowan piled up in his hands like so much rotten fruit. Wasteful hours with no payout but for misery gained.
He drew breath as he prepared an answer. "You're incongruous to one another." Legs extended, easing their narrow arches.
"Rowan… I liked his confidence. His overblown displays. He showed a lot of charm when he was happy. It was infectious for that. I know he would've made many friends if he visited those socialite parties. Girls on each arm. Or boys, as he'd have it. That was his other draw -- he didn't care much for procession. All that pomp pared away. When I was with him, we were normal kids in Destiny City. Not rich, not poor. Barely educated about youma. Intoxicated with the dangers of it. We could spend our money frivolously and never worry about what the future held. He was my life away from life. My second chance.
"And you." His jaw tightened and he swallowed back the iron tide of ire. And while his voice initially quavered with it, Faustite forced it smooth. "You share that bombastic streak with Rowan, but that's the end of your similarities. You denigrate everyone around you and the cynic in me resonated with that. To want to tear the whole world down… How do you put that into words?" Faustite smirked. "But you treated me like a person. Like I wasn't facing the end of the known world. It's rare to get respect anymore, but you gave it. And you were interesting -- at least for a time. I wanted to explore you.
"But we both know that's over now." Faustite closed his eyes to the boat, and in its stead called up the rock-hewn corridors adorning the Citadel.
Jack’s stubborn chin fell to his thundering chest as he absorbed the response provided. His hands wrung each other in silent anguish as adrenaline fed them strength they knew not what to do with. So...that’s how you saw us, was it? That’s what we gave you.
”To tear the whole world down was never a want of mine.” His head rose from his chest only to incline toward one shoulder, allowing a new angle from which to view Faustite. “Maybe a person or two...but only recently.”
Obsidian pools shut themselves to Jack. The cabin door beckoned him away from the taunting window, promising him his own means of departure. “Since you seem convinced the only logical course of action for me to take is to ‘walk out on you’, I’d hate to disappoint any more than I already have.” His hands ceased their strangling of one another and dropped to his sides as he turned his back to the captain.
“Consider that report my last to you. I won’t come back here anymore.” Jack’s voice compressed into cold steel that formed his final three syllables. “Bye, Elex.”
Strickenized
